Labor’s Tax Grab

It is clear now Wayne Swan’s forecast of a return to surplus in this year’s Budget will come from accounting tricks and increased taxes and not by cutting the Government’s reckless spending.

With the Budget deficit in excess of $40 billion this year Mr Swan has refused to rule out imposing new or higher taxes in next week’s Federal Budget.

Mr Swan has a poor record on budget forecasts. In MYEFO the Treasurer predicted an increase in revenue of $38.1 billion in 2012-13. Even accounting for Wayne Swan’s new $5 billion write down, it still means that Labor plans to raise over $33 billion more in revenue next year than it than it did this year. This revenue increase is almost nine times the revenue of the mining tax for 2012-13.

Labor has no excuse for raising taxes on Australian families, but it will.

In the past four years Labor has imposed 21 new or increased taxes.

This Labor Government continues to be a high spending administration. Spending as a percentage of GDP is predicted to be 24.8% this year. In the last year of the previous Coalition Government it was 23.1%.